BELLADONNA 

by ADAM BERIS 

July-August, 2023

 

Case Edgerton Studios is proud to present, BELLADONNA, new work for the board by Los Angeles based artist and curator Adam Beris. At the corner of Case and Edgerton on the East Side through August.

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‘Found imagery has always been part of my practice. Sometimes, the images find their way into the paintings. Usually, they’re just inspiration fodder. Other times they end up being the work. Compiling and altering the imagery is a low-stakes form of drawing; I can shift narrative and meaning by placing one image next to another or by changing scale. I chose to use this photograph for the board because of the rudimentary and seductive nature of the image. The pink backdrop, the veil, the presence of a maquette chapel referencing the history of Case Edgerton Studios, the dog in an almost-reclining pose. The photograph is innocent and playfully perverse at the same time. It functions as a billboard advertisement with no real goods or products to sell. I hope it is a welcomed interruption in the urban environment.’

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Adam Beris (b. 1987, Milwaukee, WI) makes paintings that celebrate and challenge traditional relationships between object, subject, foreground, and background. Beris’ primary action in the studio is squeezing paint from tubes. Deftly extruding streams of unadulterated color into an array of symbols, characters, food, ideas, and abstractions, Beris has created an ever- expanding lexicon of pictographs that are informed by the shapes of language, infographics, and the pervasive influence of social media. Aligned in grids, Beris’ glyphs function like a lost codec of a childhood dream, but tangled amongst the blades of extruded paint grass, they resemble the refuse of a careless and anthropocentric society—and to prove his point Beris embeds litter from walks in his neighborhood in between painting sessions.

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Beris received a dual degree in Painting and Creative Writing from Kansas City Art Institute in 2009. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including MCC Longview Cultural Center in Lee’s Summit, MO; Over the Influence in Hong Kong and Los Angeles, CA; Y53 and OCHI in Los Angeles, CA; The Omaha Creative Institute in Omaha, NE; and OCHI in Sun Valley, ID. Beris currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and is represented by OCHI.